View full sizeGus Chan, The Plain DealerChris Coburn, executive director of Cleveland Clinic Innovations, talks with Charlie Lougheed, president and chief technology officer for Explorys, a young technology company based in the Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center, near the Cleveland Clinic.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- At 9:30 on a Monday morning, an array of brainpower enabled by caffeine and smart phones sits in the glass-walled office near the Cleveland Clinic campus.

A lean 53-year-old who has hired most of the two dozen people packed into this room sits at the end of a long table, crunching through a cup full of ice.

For the next 90 minutes, the room percolates with talk of cardiac-pacing technologies, artificial kidneys, ventricular devices, heart valves and stents.

It's serious business. When the conference room phone rings, a man picks up the receiver and quickly puts it down. When it rings again seconds later, he plucks out the phone line.

Much is expected of Coburn and his group, located at the Clinic's new Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center. Their task -- nurturing inventions that emerge from several thousand scientists and doctors at the Clinic and guiding them through a years-long slog to commercial viability.

Licensing medical innovations generates about $8 million yearly for the Clinic. More importantly, the new products profoundly affect patients' lives.

Coburn and his colleagues have been at it for a decade, steadily building a corporate-venturing program that was flagging when he arrived.

Personal: He and wife, Nancy, live in Shaker Heights. They have two daughters and a son.

Education: Bachelor's degree in political science, John Carroll University. Master's in public administration, George Washington University.

Memberships: Appointee to Ohio's Third Frontier Advisory Board. Trustee of Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, Hathaway Brown School and the City Club of Cleveland.

Measured by numbers of inventions, start-up companies and the like, Clinic Innovations compares well with similar efforts at other medical institutions, statistics from the Association of University Technology Managers show.

"Chris is very politically savvy and has done a great job of building a profile for a group that didn't exist before he showed up," said lawyer Ted Theofrastous, former chief commercialization counsel for Clinic Innovations. "He's taken it from a few people to a small army who are getting a lot done."

Coburn, described as a fitness fanatic, compares the effort to "climbing a mountain."

His work ethic is boggling, even in a doctor-dominant Clinic culture that thrives on long hours. He's up at 4 a.m., with e-mails arriving in colleagues' mailboxes shortly thereafter.

"I call it the surgical mind-set," said Coburn, whose father was a thoracic surgeon with a large, consuming practice. "When a surgeon and his team are in the [operating room], they think, 'We are on a mission, we have to get it done.' . . . It's the same with us. We are on a mission."

The region needs this sweat equity from Coburn and Clinic Innovations. Not only is the Clinic the region's largest employer, but spinning off new companies from Clinic inventions is also vital for a regional economy that must diversify beyond its manufacturing reliance.

"There's an extraordinary amount of research and intellectual capital at the Clinic," said Brad Whitehead, a bicycling partner of Coburn's and president of the Fund for Our Economic Future. "Chris can increase the probability that the intellectual property will turn into businesses and jobs."

Coburn has developed project

into a well-regarded concern

When Cleveland Clinic Innovations launched a decade ago, it had one worker and a backlog of 200 promising inventions to vet.

The worker, an administrative assistant, left after a couple of months, said Chris Coburn, then the new head of Clinic Innovations.

"She announced she was going to another part of the Cleveland Clinic because, in her words, 'You people work too hard,' " Coburn said.

These days, Clinic Innovations has 36 employees and a national profile, due in part to a growing number of marketable inventions and an international Medical Innovation Summit, now in its eighth year.

Coburn and his team work with the Clinic's inventors to get new medical technologies to market. That means licensing medical devices and treatments to existing companies, or launching new companies to market them.

In a decade, Clinic Innovations has executed more than 210 licenses for medical innovations, generating some $8 million a year in royalties and other revenue.

Numbers of inventions indicate the culture of innovation is growing at the Clinic.

From 2006 to 2008, Clinic doctors and scientists disclosed 200 inventions per year. That was one of the top rates in the nation, even among hospital systems with bigger research budgets, statistics from the Association of University Technology Managers show.

Only a few have products on the market. A number of the new companies are in the midst of years-long testing and regulatory approvals for devices and treatments.

Finding money to support the young companies is a challenge. The venture capital market has tightened, after growing more robust here through the 2000s, officials said.

Total employment at the 33 companies stands at 299. But only 106 of the jobs are in the Cleveland area. That's because four spinoff companies with significant employment set up shop outside Ohio, for a variety of reasons.

One of them, Cleveland BioLabs Inc., left for Buffalo in 2007, to the chagrin of Clinic officials.

The company's key player, a noted cancer researcher at the Clinic, landed a prestigious job at a Buffalo cancer center, along with grants from the state of New York to open a new research facility.

Coburn believes Cleveland-area employment among the spin-off companies will double in the next 12 to 14 months, as a number of them move from clinical trials to market.

The companies have drawn $425 million in capital, Coburn said, ranging from a few million dollars to tens of millions of dollars.

Clinic Innovations does a commendable job of culling its marketable opportunities and presenting them to investors, said Darren Carroll, vice president of new ventures for Eli Lilly and Co., in Indianapolis.

"We've met with a number of companies out there," Carroll said. "We've been impressed with the people they put in charge, and their relative sophistication as investors themselves."

Efforts by Clinic Innovations and the state of Ohio to incubate new companies got a boost with the spring opening of a new office building, housing the Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center.

The $19 million incubator is a result of the $60 million grant a Clinic-led team of institutions won from Ohio's Third Fronter technology-development program in 2006.

It's part of a $250 million, public-private effort to develop new products and treatments for heart- and artery-related illnesses.

Among myriad services, the incubator offers fledgling companies wet laboratories, videoconferencing, brain-storming rooms and links to venture capitalists. A dozen companies have space in the incubator, which should be 70 percent full by year's end, Clinic officials said.

The building sits at East 100th Street and Cedar Avenue. It's the first Clinic structure south of Cedar, symbolizing commitment to a struggling Fairfax neighborhood, Clinic officials said.

The Fairfax neighborhood development corporation is a part owner of the building.

Clinic Innovations hosts the summit, which Coburn pushed to establish.

"It has built the credibility of Cleveland Clinic Innovations," said Mark Frantz, a veteran entrepreneur and investor in the medical-device sector who has known Coburn for decades. "It's a great example of how Chris backs opportunities. He thought at a higher level and on a political basis, 'What can we do to get our name in the press and create awareness among clinicians and experts?' "

None of the start-ups has blossomed into a large employer. Nearly half are still in the early stages of raising money. A number face years of clinical trials and a regulatory gantlet.

"Hopefully, there are some home runs waiting to happen," said Whitehead, whose nonprofit fund invests heavily in the region's economic development efforts. "There is a promising set of companies that have been able to attract outside venture capital and hold a great deal of promise."

What Coburn has achieved with Clinic Innovations is no surprise to those who know him.

Honing of skills, abilityto think on your feet

Coburn grew up in University Heights, the second-youngest among seven brothers and sisters.

It was a traditional Irish-Catholic clan, led by a father who knew the value of education, Coburn said.

The Coburn kids took turns reading the New York Times aloud around the dinner table. His father took notes.

For high school, Coburn veered from the St. Ignatius route of older brothers and headed for the more blue-collar St. Joseph's High School (now Villa Angela-St. Joseph's.)

He thrived in debate and Student Council.

"The ability to think on your feet and crystallize concepts in a pressure environment is something debate teaches you," Coburn said. "For me, it was a great honing of skills."

As Student Council president, Coburn led an effort to pump up the student-activities fund.

They did it mainly through marketing "Battle of the Bands" dances at the high school, raising a stunning $20,000.

View full sizeGus Chan, The Plain DealerChristopher Coburn, executive director of Cleveland Clinic Innovations speaks with Charlie Lougheed, president and chief technology officer for Explorys, a technology company based in the new Global Cardiovascular Center.

"Heran most of the dances. They were the best in town," said Mike Gallagher, Coburn's best friend and chief executive of John F. Gallagher Co., a mechanical contractor based in Eastlake. "We worked with promoters. It was run like a business -- organized, with tasks and expectations."

Coburn applied the same intensity to several parties at home, when his parents would leave town.

He, Gallagher and others copied scores of maps to Coburn's home and handed them out at girls' Catholic high schools. Crowds overran the Coburn property. "You couldn't move from one end of the house to the other," Gallagher said.

Meticulous cleanups meant taking trash to Dumpsters at the nearby Gesu Catholic School. But Coburn was busted when unhappy Gesu janitors found the maps and complained.

"For years after high school, I would meet people, usually women, who would say, 'I was at a party at your house,' " Coburn said.

While pursuing a political science degree, he took a class in science and public policy. From that point on, much of his life would be spent at the juncture of politics, technology and economic development.

Coburn's life took another turn when he crossed paths with another political science major. He met his future wife, Nancy, also a fifth-generation Clevelander.

The Coburns have three children. Much like Chris' father, they took unusual steps to encourage education at home. When the family television broke, it wasn't replaced for 13 years.

"When the kids would complain, we would say the TV is broken and we can't afford to fix it," said Coburn, who believes the home blackout made avid readers of his brood.

His children went to Gesu school, just like Coburn. The family vacations at a cottage community in Massachusetts, a place where Coburn has traveled 51 straight summers.

He's a big believer in roots.

"In a complex world, when so many things are fluid, having roots, having constancy, is important," Coburn said.

At the vanguardof development

After John Carroll, Coburn's attraction to politics and policy led him to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he earned a master's in public administration.

He worked stints at the National Institutes of Health, NASA and the office of former Congressman Louis Stokes.

The rough and tumble of politics wasn't enough. Coburn joined a rugby club, developing lifelong friendships with congressional aides and government officials he played with. Rugby also left Coburn with a slightly bent nose and a scar high on his forehead.

"You're all in," Coburn said of rugby's parallel to his working life. "You concentrate as hard as you can, work as hard as you can, and when you're done, you're completely fatigued -- the happy warrior type."

In 1983, Coburn was recruited to the Washington, D.C., office of Gov. Richard Celeste. The next year, at age 27, he was back in Ohio serving as the governor's science and technology adviser and deputy director of the Ohio Department of Development.

He was at the vanguard of efforts to fuel technology-related development of state economies. Ohio's wide-ranging strategy included doling small grants to promising companies. One went to a company recruited from Pennsylvania that would grow into Steris Corp, Coburn said.

At the end of Celeste's two terms, Coburn took a job building a technology-development consultancy with Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus.

Working out of the Cleveland area, Coburn built a 60-person team, consulting with public, private and academic clients on how to commercialize tech-based innovations.

Several trustees of the Clinic, who knew Coburn and his work, floated the possibility of boosting the Clinic's commercialization efforts.

Coburn talked with Dr. Delos "Toby" Cosgrove, then chairman of cardiac surgery, who was charged with turning around the commercialization program.

"The thing that got me to come to the Clinic, probably above everything else, was that he and I connected," Coburn said of Cosgrove, now the Clinic's chief executive. "I had pretty good picture of what he wanted and what the challenge had been."

Coburn was named head of the newly formed Cleveland Clinic Innovations. Dr. Joseph Hahn, then chairman of surgery, was the first board chairman.

"He had a vision and a game plan," Hahn said. "I helped him with all the land mines and got him into all the surgeons' and doctors' offices."

Hahn watched Coburn scale "a mountain of inertia."

"He has the ability to get along with damn near everybody, from physicians, to politicians, to vendors, to investment folks," said Hahn, who now serves as the Clinic's chief of staff. "Quite frankly, I've never seen anybody move in and out of crowds like he does."

Hahn said they found untapped demand after launching seminars on how to get medical inventions to market.

"We thought we'd be lucky to get over 40 people," Hahn said. "Well over 200 attended. We were dumbfounded. We just thought it wasn't their priority."

Among Coburn's strongest attributes, Hahn and others agreed, is an ability to land millions in state and federal dollars for research and commercialization.

Those skills were exemplified in latter half of 2006, when a Coburn-led team set its sights on landing a big-ticket state grant to incubate heart-related companies across the state.

"We put the proposal with a driver to Columbus at 5 in the morning the last day" it was due, Coburn said. "We had some beer stashed in the closet. So we're drinking warm beer at 5 in the morning. It was great. It doesn't get any better."

Weeks later, Coburn's team, which included some of the Clinic's top doctors and researchers, boarded a bus for a formal pitch to evaluators from the National Academy of Sciences in Columbus.

After a strong presentation, Coburn and his enthused team boarded the bus and broke out beer and single-malt scotch. On the way back, Coburn had someone read the stirring St. Crispin's Day speech, from William Shakespeare's play "Henry V." A copy of it hangs on Coburn's office wall.

Near its end, the speech reads:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he today that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother.

"Some of the people in my office would tell you that that moment, that day was the greatest day of their time at Cleveland Clinic," he said.

A short time later, the Clinic learned its business-incubator proposal would receive $60 million. To date, it's the largest grant awarded under Ohio's $2.1 billion Third Frontier program.

A deathin the family

Recent years have brought tragedy, too.

One of Coburn's older brothers, Miles, a biology professor at John Carroll, was killed in a bike accident two years ago in Geauga County.

Coburn joined family, friends and colleagues of his brother to organize a bicycle-riding fundraiser. The "Ride for Miles" generates thousands of dollars for an environmental symposium held yearly at John Carroll.

Like his siblings, Chris remains an avid bicyclist. It's a habit passed down from his father, now 89, who often biked between the Coburn' home and Euclid Hospital.

Forty-mile weekend rides are the norm for Coburn. He tackles the jaunts the way he handles his job, said Whitehead.

"He's not the guy sprinting up the hill or doing something crazy to get in front," Whitehead said. "He is just consistently a strong and dogged guy. Think about that in the business world. He'll do whatever it takes over an extended period of time to achieve excellence."

LEADING THE WAY: An occasional look at people and ideas shaping Northeast Ohio's future.

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